cnn ^ | updated 12:21 PM EDT, Sun April 29, 2012 | Ron Johnson
Editor's note: U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin, is a member of the Senate Budget Committee.
(CNN) -- The U.S. government is the largest financial entity in the world. Nothing else comes close.
On Sunday, April 29, it will be exactly three years since the U.S. Senate passed a budget.
If you own or work for a small business that has a loan from a bank, I'm quite sure your business has a budget -- and a rather detailed budget at that. Every year around tax time, many American families sit down to fill out tax forms, estimate their income, and set spending priorities for the upcoming year. It's the responsible thing to do.
And yet, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid appears to believe it is not necessary for the Senate to fulfill its legal responsibility by debating and passing a budget to account for $3.8 trillion in federal spending next fiscal year, $15.6 trillion of debt and, according to figures produced by the Senate Budget Committee Republican staff, more than $65 trillion in additional unfunded liabilities.
To provide some perspective to these incomprehensible numbers, the total net private asset base -- that is, the net value of all household assets, small business assets, and large business assets -- of the United States is $82 trillion, according to figures from the Federal Reserve Flow of Funds Account from March 8, 2012.
Even worse, President Barack Obama and his administration seem to view budgeting as just one more political maneuver. His efforts have been so completely unserious that the President's 2012 budget was rejected by a vote of 97-0 in the Senate. And three weeks ago, when Rep. Mick Mulvaney, R-South Carolina, sponsored a budget proposal based on Obama's 2013 budget plan, it lost in the House by a vote of 414-0.
(Excerpt) Read more at cnn.com ...
